A crew from the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority made repairs to a pipe along the bank of Scotts Creek after an estimated 125,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into the waterway adjacent to Mountain View Tire and Service over five days last week. The problem, according to Stan Bryson, TWSA's wastewater operations superintendent, occurred when a plug in the abandoned pipe became dislodged. - Herald photo by Lisa Majors-Duff
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Raw sewage flowed into Sylva's downtown waterway last week, during Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority's third spill in five months.
Some 125,000 gallons of sewage emptied into Scotts Creek over five days between Oct. 7-11, according to Stan Bryson, TWSA's wastewater operations superintendent. "We found the spill at about 2 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 11) and had it fixed by 4:30 p.m.," Bryson said. The spill occurred when the concrete plug in the end of an 8-inch abandoned pipe just below the parking lot at Mountain View Tire and Service (formerly Carolina Tire) became dislodged, said Bryson. By using figures generated at a pump station located at Jackson Paper, he was able to estimate the spill at 25,000 gallons a day. "I didn't even know the pipe was there," Bryson said. "It was just sticking out into the creek." Repairs included a new plug and a cap over the end of the pipe, which Bryson estimates was installed about 20 years ago but never used. Last week's spill marks TWSA's third such reportable occurrence since May, when slightly more than 108,000 gallons of untreated wastewater spilled into the Tuckaseigee River after a pump designed to empty a holding tank at the River Road treatment plant failed. |